Armed with a new set of demands, graduate teaching assistants at Kansas University rallied Thursday to kick off their next round of contract negotiations.

About 50 students marched from the Kansas Union to Strong Hall — complete with drums and signs — to deliver a letter to Provost David Shulenburger indicating the group wants to reopen negotiations on its current contract, which is set to expire in October.

Leaders of the Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition, the union representing KU’s approximately 900 teaching assistants, said they were hoping the bargaining process would be less contentious than the last time, when a mediator had to be summoned to break a deadlock between the two sides.

“There’s no reason to come out confrontational,” said Brian Azcona, GTAC co-president. “We just want to open communication lines, not push them in a corner.”

The current GTAC contract, ratified in October 2002 after 22 months of negotiations, raised the minimum teaching assistant contract to $10,000 from $5,500. It also pumped in an additional $3 million per year into teaching salaries in the form of merit raises, a result of tuition increase money.

Azcona, a teaching assistant in sociology, said the group hasn’t finalized its wish-list for this round of negotiations. But some topics will include:

• Salaries. Even with the increase, KU lags behind the national average of between $13,000 and $14,000 a year, Azcona said.


Graduate teaching assistants at Kansas University stage a rally Thursday to deliver a letter to kick off contract negotiations with the administration. Brian Azcona, Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition co-president, bottom left, led the group to Strong Hall and then delivered the letter to KU Provost David Shulenburger.

“There’s definitely opportunity to increase,” he said. “We don’t want to say any specific number off the bat.”

• Appointment limitations. A new KU policy enacted after the last contract was ratified allows teaching assistants to work for only 10 semesters.
• Health insurance.

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“Coverage has been a big issue,” said Kyle Waugh, GTAC’s other co-president. “It’s difficult to say how much can be accomplished.”

• Grievance procedure. Waugh, a graduate assistant in English, said students want more say in employee dispute issues, or for an outside mediator to be involved.

Azcona said the group hopes to begin meeting in the fall. Shulenburger said it might be possible to have a meeting before the end of the spring semester.

Lynn Bretz, a KU spokeswoman, said the university shared the students’ wishes to have a more congenial negotiations process but declined to discuss specific issues that might be discussed.

“We can’t talk about the prospects,” she said.